Daughter of God (A Still Small Voice Book 3)
Contents:
The doctrines of the kingdom, taught in their simplicity and purity, have an everlasting impact on children as the Spirit bears confirming witness. In some respects, our children are like investigators in the gospel, inquiring and learning. When they ask questions and express thoughts that seem only remotely connected to the subject during family home evening, we should take their comments seriously and encourage thinking on their part, even though taking time to handle their concerns may keep us from getting through the lesson just as we planned.
Supporting them in this way teaches children to trust their own feelings. Lead them in wholesome family activities. Carefully selected activities can remove the family from worldly influences into a circle of peace and loving mutual support. The sense of belonging to an eternal family, which is a spiritual feeling, will serve children as a divine reference point by which to measure other relationships. Gangs and other damaging groups would have far less appeal if youth were spiritually bonded to their families. I was completely happy. Talk to them at every opportunity. Some of our favorite recollections are of heart-to-heart conversations when our children were anxious to delay bedtime.
We listened, asking just enough questions to encourage a child to recount the joys and disappointments of the day. These opportunities for sharing spiritual feelings with a child can also be found during ordinary daily activities like working in the garden, cleaning up the dishes, and going on errands. Listen for spiritual promptings. One mother shared a story that illustrates the way parents can give gentle guidance in situations like these. After a school carnival, her younger sons, Richard and Joe, were excited that they each had won a cent balsa wood airplane, and her oldest son, Sam, was elated at winning two of them.
But as the boys climbed into bed, Richard accidentally knelt on his airplane and broke it into pieces. The mother suggested that Sam share one of his planes. A few minutes later, Richard wiped away his tears as he thanked Sam for the gift. And Sam wrote in his journal: It was so warm I was about to burst. Teaching about the Spirit seems particularly difficult when things are going badly at home. Our first impulse may be to take harsh measures with our children, perhaps to criticize, belittle, or condemn. At times like these, it is more important than ever to seek the Spirit and to restore peace by its influence and guidance.
When we respond to disobedience, contention, or rebelliousness in this way, we invite healing through the Spirit and teach our families of the peace it brings. You may force them to hell by using harsh means in the efforts to make them good, when you yourselves are not as good as you should be. It may mean confessing our shortcomings to them and asking their forgiveness. It may cause us to weep with them over whatever has gone wrong. When we faithfully do this sacred work of teaching our children, we do not do it alone. The sacrifices we make, the tears we shed, and the prayers we offer are never wasted.
The very fact that we try calls forth heavenly assistance. Reading the scriptures helps instill a spiritual outlook on life. Family members can take turns reading aloud, trying to express their understanding of the verses clearly. Doing this will help children learn the language of scripture, and even those too young to understand all the words can experience the memorable tones and rhythms of the language.
Singing the songs of Zion together. The right kind of music can prompt deep emotion accompanied by the influence of the Spirit. A man in his twenties who had not been associated with the Church since Primary was surprised as he worked on his construction job one day to find a Primary song, simple and memorable, going through his mind. The Spirit he had felt in childhood when he had sung this song came over him, and he sought out the Church again.
Sharing testimonies, both in fast and testimony meeting and at home. After being confirmed, Kathy bore her testimony and found herself crying as she spoke. Susan recalls that once when she was a little girl she sat on the lap of a sister in the ward during a sacrament meeting while her mother took care of a new baby. I was listening intently and can still remember the feeling that came over me.
I knew I was where I was supposed to be and doing what I was supposed to be doing.
Some Family Activities That Invite the Spirit
Was it articulate or not? Was it accompanied by an outward rustling, as Cheyne thinks? We do not know. All that is of consequence is that in it Elijah recognized the presence of God and came forth to worship. Looking at the words more closely we see— i. That God is most really in the gentlest things—in that which is still. That God is not in the agencies that seem the mightiest—He prefers to manifest Himself in that which is small.
That God manifests Himself as a Voice. Stillness It is difficult to realize that in the hush which followed the fire, the earthquake, the wind, God really was. But if there is any meaning in this story, it is that the silence was more really Divine than the noise, the flash, and the trembling which went before. And one of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that God is in the quiet, the gentle influences which are ever around us, working upon us as the atmosphere does, without any visible or audible token of its presence.
We must seek to discern God in the quiet and the gentle. It is perhaps because we fail to discern Him there that He comes sometimes in the tempest. We do not find Him in health, and so He comes in sickness. We do not find Him in prosperity, and so He comes in adversity. We do not find Him in the stillness, and so He is compelled to come in the storm. But He would rather take the gentle way.
Are there not, then, two musics unto men? Yet turn to other none,— Turn not, oh, turn not thou! But listen, listen, listen,—if haply be heard it may; Listen, listen, listen,—is it not sounding now? In quietness there is power. We have fallen upon a generation of fuss, and bustle, and trumpet-blowing, and advertising. It would almost seem as if many of us believed that we were to take the world by storm. We get up excitements in mass-meetings, and pass resolutions, and listen to eloquent orators, and make thundering plaudits, as if these alone were to win the day. We have more faith in the whirlwind and the earthquake than in the still small voice; and we mistake a momentary out-flashing of enthusiasm for the celebration of a final triumph.
The sensational is everywhere in the ascendant. We see it in the extravagance of dress that seeks to call attention to itself; we see it in the domain of literature, in the highly coloured and hotly seasoned romances; we see it in feverish speculations. Surely there is something in this vision for our sensation-loving life. It were well that we had less faith in noise, and more in that which is the most God-like thing on earth, namely, a character moulded after the example of Christ, and created and sustained by the agency of the Holy Ghost.
It were well that the voices among us were less loud, and the deeds were more pronounced. Life is more potent than words; and character, though quiet, is more influential in the long-run than any immediate sensation that flares up and crackles like a blaze of thorns. No sound attends the crystallization of the dewdrops on the myriad blades of grass in the summer evenings; and while the crops are growing in the fields, so profound sometimes is the stillness that all nature seems asleep. Yet how quietly it is accomplished! There is first a streak of light along the edge of the eastern horizon, so faint that you wonder whether it has not shot out from that brilliant star; then a few stray gleams of glory, as if the northern aurora had flitted to another quarter of the heavens; then a flush of ruddy beauty before which the stars begin to pale; and as we watch how one by one these faithful sentinels put out their lamps, the sun himself appears, and becomes the undisputed monarch of the heavens.
But it is all so silent that the sleeper is not awakened on his couch, and the pale, sick one who has been longing for the morning knows not it is there until through the shadowed casement it looks in upon him with its benignant smile. It seems as though the violent crowd can carry all before it. Standing before the surging, shouting throng is the meek figure of the Master! It seems as though one hand out of the violent mob could crush Him like a moth!
And yet we now know that in that silent figure there dwelt the secret of Almightiness, and the Lord was not in the mob. But from that quietest room emerges all the force which speeds the busy looms in their process of production. Let the engine be neglected, let countless looms be added without proportional increase of power, and the mill breaks down.
We have been neglecting our quietest room, our power-room; we have been adding to the strain without multiplying the force, and the effects are seen in weariness, joylessness, and ineffectiveness. We must not work less, but we must pray more. We cannot minimize our activities; but we must sustain them with those more adequate supplies of grace that come in answer to common prayer.
In the quietest force—love—there is most power. The more fiercely the wind blew, the more firmly the wayfaring man gathered his outer garment about him. But when the sun shone warmly upon him he speedily threw the weighty covering from his shoulders. So antagonism creates antagonism. If you attempt to drag me by force, it is in my nature to resist you, and I will pull against you with all my might; but if you try to attract me by kindness, it is equally in my nature to yield to its influence, and I will follow you of my own free will.
What the hammer will not weld together without fiery heat and prolonged labour, the magnet will bring together and hold together in a moment. So in dealing with men, the mightiest influence is love. I was a lad of fifteen years at the time, an unindentured apprentice on board a large sailing ship which was homeward bound with a cargo of grain from Tacoma, Puget Sound. Not far south of San Francisco we encountered a violent storm which continued without abatement for nearly forty-eight hours.
Women can be sexist pigs, too. See all customer images. But his past is catching up with him. Jul 19, Catriona Troth rated it really liked it. She doesn't raise any new subjects, but what she does, she does so in a very forceful and authoritative voice. He spun it in the colour of the lily and made us hear it in the noiseless fall of the sparrow. He fears for her.
The severe buffeting to which the ship was subjected by the great seas caused the cargo to shift, and the vessel lay with her starboard rail completely submerged. To make matters worse, a spare spar had burst from its fastenings, and to the roar of the elements was added at frequent intervals the thud, thud, of this spar as the sea dashed it like a battering ram against the deck. Our situation was one of extreme peril, and little hope was entertained by captain or crew that the vessel would weather the storm.
In the midst of the storm I felt the awe which the play of destructive forces can inspire. As I considered our danger, these same forces stirred my heart with fear. Loud and terrible, however, as were the voices which spoke to me, their message did not go deep enough to abide. The impression made on me by this dread experience, though it seemed at the time to be very great, proved to be altogether transient.
The sense of danger then began to yield to a feeling of security, and my own conduct, as that of the crew generally, was characterized by levity itself. Before the anchor was cast in the beautiful harbour of San Francisco, the storm and danger were only a memory. The solemn experience had left no other sign. Very different in its effect was the experience of my first hours at home, where I arrived about seven months later. I had deserted my vessel in Frisco, and my relatives did not know where I was or how I had been conducting myself.
After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld
When I stood before them empty-handed, their fears that all had not been right were quickened; yet only words of welcome were spoken. Their looks, however, and their voices, had something in them that appealed powerfully to all that was best in me. That experience is more than a memory. The impression it made was deep and abiding. It has long been my conviction that that was the turning-point in my spiritual history.
Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise. O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love! With that deep hush subduing all Our words and works that drown The tender whisper of Thy call, As noiseless let Thy blessing fall, As fell Thy manna down. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm! Smallness The significance of the symbolism portrayed before the despondent prophet was surely that, while comparative impotence may roar in the guise of tempest and fire, Almightiness may move in whispers.
Feebleness hides in the apparently overwhelming; Almightiness hides in apparent impotence. God was in the weak thing! Elijah left the mount with his conceptions entirely changed. And so we see that we must look for God in the everyday occurrences. We should all like to be spoken to by a prodigy. But the Lord does not often do that.
He is too great to do that. It belongs to everything that is really great to act simply. The infinite God does all His works in the simplest manner possible. And the Lord does everything in a way to show His own power. If the machinery were great, the mover might be little. There is in many minds something which makes them crave for proofs of the presence and power of God in remarkable interruptions of nature and providence rather than in their orderly course.
It is a perversion of the truth. If a miracle is sublime, how much more sublime is the unity and greatness of the order which it seems, on some singular occasion, to interrupt. The mind which has learned to see God in the daily course of nature and providence comes nearer to the happy truth than that to which this order is meaningless, and which cries out to Him to raise up His power and come and declare His presence by miraculous wonders.
Is it not better for us to learn that God is near in the daily exhibitions of His goodness than to look for Him only in those rare events in which we try to persuade ourselves that He has worked a miracle in answer to our cry? For one miraculous we enjoy a thousand customary gifts of grace and kindness. Happy are we if in our deep hearts we consent that this is so, and that this is best. We must not undervalue agencies because they seem to be insignificant. It used to be thought that the upheaval of the continents and the rearing of the great mountains was due to cataclysms and conflagrations and vast explosions of volcanic force.
It has long been known that they are due, on the contrary, to the inconceivably slow modifications produced by the most insignificant causes. It is the age-long accumulation of mica-flakes that has built up the mighty bastions of the Alps. It is the toil of the ephemeral coral insect that has reared whole leagues of the American Continent and filled the Pacific Ocean with those unnumbered isles Which, like to rich and various gems, inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep. It is the slow silting up of the rivers that has created vast deltas for the home of man.
I allowed the two symbols to confront each other, and they enshrined for me the teaching given to Elijah in the days of old. The ghostly power suggested by the pulpit was of infinitely greater import than the carnal power suggested by the battlefield. I remember one day passing along the road, by the far-stretching works of Messrs. Armstrong, that vast manufactory of destructive armaments. I was almost awed by the massiveness of the equipment and by the terrific issues of their work.
The ghostly breathing was in the plain little edifice, and the creations of its ministries will be found when the bristling armaments have crumbled into dust. He has left no man utterly without guidance. Often, however, the voice is almost silent, because dulled by its faulty medium, man. But to-day we are not dependent on the voice of conscience alone. There is the voice of the human Jesus. The bruised reed He never broke; the smoking flax He never quenched. He did not strive, nor cry, nor lift up His voice in the street.
Evil spirits cowered at His presence; sickness, and sorrow, and death fled before Him. If we ask what gives us assurance of the truth and justice of God, the answer is, the life and death of Christ, who is the Son of God, and the Revelation of God. We know what He Himself has told us of God, and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from perfect truth; nay, this goodness itself is the only conception we can form of God, if we confess what the mere immensity of the material world tends to suggest—that the Almighty is not a natural or even a supernatural power, but a Being of whom the reason and conscience of man have a truer conception than imagination in its highest flights.
There is the voice of the risen Lord. Other religions have books: Muhammadanism has a book, and a grand old book it is, called the Koran.
A Still, Small Voice and millions of other books are available for Amazon Kindle. See all 3 images . still voice" of intuition--a voice that Bodine believes is really the sound of God's guidance. Since she was a child, Bodine was encouraged to trust her inner voice: the one, her mother explained, in her gut, not in her mind. A Still Small Voice and millions of other books are available for Amazon Kindle. . Add all three to Cart . Not only were her messages coming at a daily rate, they were also unfailingly self-serving: God loves her, calls her his "daughter," and.
Some of its stories are almost equal in beauty to the stories of the Book of Genesis. But Muhammadanism has no voice. Muhammad is dead, and his voice is silent in the tomb. Hinduism has books, and interesting books they are, called the Veda and Shaster. They are full of hymns and precepts. Some of them are almost equal in purity and spirituality to some of the Old Testament Psalms and Proverbs.
But Hinduism has no voice. The great prophets of Hinduism who thought out the books are dead, and their voices are heard no more. Christianity also has a book. It is more beautiful than the Veda or Shaster. But the book of Christianity is also a voice. The Prophet of Christianity is not dead.
What can we learn from Elijah’s encounter with God?
Christ is alive, and fills all the words of the Bible with a living voice. He speaks again, through His Spirit, the very words which He spoke when on earth. Herein is the great difference between the Bible and every other book. Other books contain the thoughts of their authors at a particular period in their life, but they may have changed their opinions after writing them, or they may have died. Their voices cannot speak the very words they have written. We read Shakespeare and Milton, but we do not hear them. We hear Christ; His opinions are unchangeable, and He is ever living.
He speaks the sweet words of mercy to every generation. When I have seen an idol arrayed in traditionary terrors, and magnificently paraded through the streets of a large native town, and in the night too; and when ten thousand human beings have pressed near to worship amid the gleaming of innumerable torches of coloured light, and rockets and candles of every device shooting up into the air; and when the priests have sung in solemn cadence, and the multitudes have shouted their acclamations, I have caught the prevailing awe.
With all my better knowledge I could not resist the terror and beauty of the spectacle. But the Lord was not there. The multitudes returned to their homes with an intoxicated sense and a fevered imagination; yet with no silent voice to instruct and win them to God.
It was the silent winning of Calvary, and not the fiery testimony of Carmel: Hodgkin, Human Progress and the Inward Light, It seems but echo to my thought, And yet beyond the stars! It seems a heart-beat in a hush, And yet the planet jars! Oh, may it be that far within My inmost soul there lies A spirit-sky, that opens with Those voices of surprise. Thy heaven is mine—my very soul! Thy words are sweet and strong; They fill my inward silences With music and with song.
Now journey inward to thyself, And listen by the way. We may liken the laws of our country to the cliffs of our island, over which we rarely feel ourselves in any danger of falling; the moral standard of our social circle to the beaten highway road which we can hardly miss.
Follow the Author
Our own conscience would then be represented by a fence, by which some parts of the country are enclosed for each one, the road itself at times being barred or narrowed. And that Divine guidance of which I am speaking could be typified only by the pressure of a hand upon ours, leading us gently to step to the right or the left, in a manner intended for and understood by ourselves alone.
Caroline Stephen, Quaker Strongholds. Can we not live now as though our hearts were set only upon eternal values? Can we not do with our lives now what we would do if we knew for certain that nothing shall live but love? Above all, we shall not be tempted to think that success or failure depends in the least upon what the world can see. Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet, Twice broken His great heart in vain. I hear, and to myself I smile, For Christ talks with me all the while. No more unto the stubborn heart With gentle knocking shall He plead, No more the mystic pity start, For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.
So in the street I hear men say, Yet Christ is with me all the day. Christian Age , xlii. Christian World Pulpit , ii. Church of England Pulpit , lxii. Church Pulpit Year Book , ii. Examiner , 30th March Jowett. Naaman And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?
The history of Naaman, though it fills only one chapter of the Bible, has much that makes it peculiarly attractive. He possessed nearly every requisite to worldly success and the full gratification of the highest ambition. He had the genius of a great commander; under his leadership the armies of Syria had won great victories. Such a man as sometimes comes to the front in the desperate needs of a nation—daring, wise, splendid in heroism, seeing the thing to be done and doing it swiftly and well: But Naaman was a leper.
We can scarcely imagine the greatness of this calamity,—the anguish that overwhelmed his proud spirit, the sorrow that pervaded his house. Thus hath the wise God thought wise to sauce the valour, dignity, renown, victories of the famous general of the Syrians. Leprosy was the most fearful and the most hateful disease known to man. Leprosy was so loathsome, and so utterly incurable and deadly, that it was not looked on as an ordinary disease at all, but rather as a special creation in His anger, and a direct curse of God, both to punish sin, and, at the same time, to teach His people something of what an accursed thing sin really is; till the whole nature of leprosy and all the laws laid down for its treatment, and the miraculous nature of its so seldom cure, all combined to work into the imagination, and into the conscience, and into the heart, and into the ritual, and into the literature of Israel, some of her deepest lessons about the terrible nature and the only proper treatment of sin.
At this distance we may pass lightly over his misfortune and think of his character, which still lives before us in that page, so fiery and generous, so proudly sensitive, and yet so responsive to the voice of reason, till, as we dwell on this, we feel a touching appropriateness in the blessing which he receives, when his flesh comes again like the flesh of a little child.
It was then that Naaman learned a lesson which many an ingenuous heart like his has learned through suffering, though some pass through life without learning it—that the truest blessings, the truest gifts, are often those which we are tempted to despise as common. It is a lesson which only experience can teach to those who need it, and yet it is not in vain to repeat it often in a time when it is much forgotten, and when the marvellous, the exciting, the new and striking, are taking the place of the wise and just and true. Men have been saved from ruin by a grasp of the hand, a kind word, a generous deed.
A bunch of flowers in a dingy and dirty tenement has started thoughts and memories that have meant the resurrection of a soul. A tear, a smile, have done for some spirits in the prisons of sorrow or sin what all the wealth of the Indies could never do. So possible is it to pack untold wealth into such small bulk. A ray of sunshine from some bright life will work a rainbow upon the tears of some forlorn sufferer.
The best gifts are, after all, the easiest given. Silvester Horne, in Youth and Life, Could we trace the intricate crossings of the lines of influence in the web of life, we would be awed many times at the potency of the giving that is small in amount but tinted red with the life-blood of sacrifice. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, A glimpse of a face in a crowded street, And afterwards life is incomplete. Thus never an act, or word, or thought, But that with unguessed importance is fraught; For small things build up eternity, And blazon the way for a destiny.
One would have thought that Naaman would have been glad to have had a certain cure promised him on such easy conditions. His pride had been humbled; the prophet had not shown him proper respect; he had proposed a condition which was ridiculous on the face of it. If the prophet had nothing better for him, he might as well turn home at once. The directions as to salvation are clear as day. He that runs may read them. On the West Coast I stood one day on the cliffs whilst a man pointed out a reef of rocks about which the wild seas foamed, and told me of an Austrian barque that in some fierce storm had struck upon the rocks, indeed was flung up on them by some huge sea.
The rocket apparatus was on the spot and fired the rocket right over the ship, so that the rope was made fast in the rigging. Instantly every sailor on the ship rushed below, and not a man was to be seen. There was the rope attached, and there hung the board in half-a-dozen languages directing as to its use. They knew that the seas would rend the ship to pieces very soon and all must perish. At last this man could stand it no longer, and getting into the buoy he went down to the ship, and in at the forecastle he flung the painted board.
A score of frightened faces looked up in terror at him. They took the board and read it; hastily they explained it to one another, and crept forth wondering. Then one, then another, availed himself of the apparatus, until all were safely on shore; and, overwhelmed with gratitude, they fell on the necks of their deliverers and wept and kissed them in their great joy.
Naaman was angry with the Prophet. Was it because he wanted to humble Naaman? Elisha had no power to heal the leprosy. He had no power to come out and wave his hand over the spot and recover the leper. No; it is no cold and haughty prophet that we see within that lowly dwelling seeking to humble Naaman. It is one whose heart is filled with pity for a case that is pitiable indeed; a great man by whom the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria, but a leper. And in his pity Elisha sees not the horses and chariots and gifts, but the leper.
Happy are they who have wise and faithful counsellors in their mothers, wives, children, friends or servants, to suggest better second thoughts and persuade them to heed these and to act sanely, instead of insanely as anger prompts! Naaman was angry at the Message. Wash and be clean! It seemed to make so light of his sickness.
He had been thinking the matter over in his own mind, and had pictured to himself what the prophet would do. It is so common a failing this of Naaman. Instead of subscribing to God, we prescribe to Him. Human Nature which is capable of much grandeur of achievement in great things, in special things, often breaks down in the presence of small things.
So it was with Naaman.
- Oathbound: Book Three of the Chronicles of Aronshae.
- Frühlicht (German Edition).
- Helping Children Hear the Still, Small Voice!
Most assuredly Naaman would have done any difficult task that had been imposed upon him; but he found it hard to do a very simple thing. We all want to do some great thing—to do what prophets, saints, heroes, and martyrs have done. But it is what He wants us to do. We all want to do some great thing. But God wants only a few of us to do the great, extraordinary things. He wants most of us to do the common things of life—the ordinary work of the world—and it is in these common things that we so often fail.
Poor Naaman would not have minded doing some great thing, but his soul rebelled at the thought of the trivial task seven times repeated. God may have great things for us to do; He certainly has small. And in the small He gives us the opportunity to prove the sincerity of our desire to serve Him in what is greater. We must not deceive ourselves with good intentions, or by dreaming that we should act nobly on the larger stage, when it is only too evident that we do not think it worth while to take trouble over the little things, which we wrongly conceive to be beneath our notice.
John Eliot, the missionary, was found, on the day of his death, in his eighty-sixth year, teaching the Indian alphabet to a child. When asked why he did it, he replied: I should be glad, indeed, to do greater things, but I will not neglect this. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, Upon the lonely mountain height He bids His fair young blossoms swell, For fragrance all and beauty bright Forth bursting from each dark green shell; And shall no flowers of courtesie Within our lowly hamlets be, To brighten with their fragrance free The homes where poor men dwell?
But there is something quite pestilently Pecksniffian about shrinking from a hard task on the plea that it is not hard enough. If a man will really try talking to the ten beggars who come to his door, he will soon find out whether it is really so much easier than the labour of writing a cheque for a hospital. Letters of Spiritual Counsel, xii. I saw one recorded the other day in half a dozen simple lines—a deed of heroism performed on the sea by a young fisherman. A fishing boat, named the Truelight , containing a father and four sons, was caught in a gale, foundered and sank.
Three of the sons were dragged down with it, and instantly drowned. The fourth swam to a floating oar, and was about to seize it, when he observed his father already clinging to it. Well he knew it could not support them both, so he simply said: It was well for Naaman that he had faithful and prudent servants, who, without in the least degree trenching upon the respect due from them to him, were yet able and willing to remonstrate affectionately with him, and to show him the unreasonableness of his conduct. Second thoughts came to him; and with an angry man, second thoughts are always best.
He listened to reason, and agreed to make the experiment. So he went down to Jordan and dipped in its waters once, twice, thrice, four times, five times, six times, and still no change. He dipped for the seventh time, and lo! It was when the will of Naaman was surrendered and the act of obedience completed that the change was wrought.
It is in the act of obedience that the Divine blessing always comes. It is here that multitudes fail. They expect the result of obedience before obedience is rendered. They expect to feel the thrill of new life before they have done the bidding of Christ. To obey is to enjoy. This is a universal rule operative in every realm of human interest. Gladstone, in a letter which his biographer tells us sets out the great work of religion as he conceived it, writes: I will quote only the lines— In His Will is our peace.
The words are few and simple, and yet they appear to me to have an inexpressible majesty of truth about them, to be almost as if they were spoken by the very mouth of God. It so happened unless my memory deceives me I first read that speech on a morning early in the year which was one of trial. I was profoundly impressed and powerfully sustained, almost absorbed by the words. They cannot be too deeply engraven upon the heart. In short, what we all want is that they should come to us not as an admonition from without, but as an instinct from within.
What say you to His? Methinks a thoughtful, high-minded Woman would scarcely feel degraded by a lot which assimilates her to the divinest Man: The Greeks at Corinth wanted that part to be left out, and it was exactly that part which St. Paul would not leave out—Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ crucified. Trust me, a noble woman laying on herself the duties of her sex, while fit for higher things—the world has nothing to show more like the Son of Man than that. Robertson, in Life and Letters, It is well at times to shift the emphasis from faith to obedience.
Let no one wait for feeling. Obey, and feeling will come. Wash in the blood of Jesus, and the leprosy of sin will instantly pass away.
What Should We Learn From God’s “Still Small Voice”?
Fill up the measure of your obedience, and the life and joy of heaven will come into your heart. When once thou art well grounded in this Inward Worship thou wilt have learnt to live in God above Time and Place. For every day will be a Sunday to thee, and wherever thou goest thou wilt have a Priest, a Church, and an Altar along with thee. He who, like Naaman, has been brought to try the Divine remedy, has proved its perfect efficacy. And so with the sinner washed in the blood of Christ.
He gets more than cleansing, he has a new life imparted to him, and that is life in resurrection, for he is made a partaker of the life of his risen Lord. And, then, thou mayest not only endure in all manner of temptation, but be actually the better and the brighter because of thy temptations. Christian Age , xxvi. Christian World Pulpit , xxxix. Church of England Pulpit , lxi. Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, xi. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: It is an old Hebrew story. Do we not hear it said sometimes that we ought to let the sins and virtues of the Israelites go, and talk to the present century about its own affairs?
But what we want is not to let the wonderful history of that ancient people go, but rather to study it far more deeply and wisely. We want to save our present life from being a poor extemporized thing by seeing how God was teaching lessons for this age of ours, and for every age, centuries ago. We cannot know how much tamer these halls of our common humanity would seem if they no longer felt the tread and echoed to the voices of the giants of the Old Testament—Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Elisha.
The king of Syria was making war upon Israel, and the prophet Elisha knew and exposed his plans. The king sent out to capture and destroy the troublesome prophet. And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host with horses and chariots was round about the city.
It is an odd instance of the inconsistency of the Syrian king that it never occurs to him that Elisha, who knew all his schemes, might know this one too, or that horses and chariots were of little use against a man who had Heaven to back him. And he answered, Fear not: And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.
Not the least, in the sense usually attached to those terms.
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This young man was as wide-awake as most of us; his eyes were as bright and as quick, as clear and far-seeing as those of a sailor at the mast-head. He had only just run in breathless to tell Elisha what he had seen—a mighty army with glittering swords, prancing steeds, and chariots well manned with soldiers, their breastplates reflecting the sheen of the sunlight. And how insistent the visible is. Our seen surroundings are so palpable and so evident.
They press in upon the spirit, and, by their strong insistence, claim to be recognized. Day by day every man works out his destiny under their influence and power. And many of them are hurtful to the spirit and harmful to the life. There is the glitter of the recent light which extinguishes for us the patient shining of the deathless stars.
The voices, clamant, and even strident, which fill the ears with their Babel, are all about us. These things are the setting of the lives of us all. He saw the light on things so clearly that he did not see the hidden light that falls through things. A Study in Personality, If we see only these things, what is the natural result?
Fear darkening to bewildered helplessness is reasonable to men who see only the material and visible dangers and enemies that beset them. The wonder is, not that we should sometimes be afraid, but that we should ever be free from fear, if we look only at visible facts. Worse foes ring us round than those whose armour glittered in the morning sunshine at Dothan, and we are as helpless to cope with them as that frightened youth was. Any man who calmly reflects on the possibilities and certainties of his life will find abundant reason for a sinking heart. He saw his people downtrodden and oppressed, poor and despised, smitten and apparently hopeless.
An ordinary man would have despaired. He saw the light of Canaan on the far horizon. The vision stiffened his courage. He broke through conventionalism, threw down worldly ambition, walked out of the palace, and, setting his face towards the desert, began forty years of stern preparation for real leadership.